Two weeks after a 5-year-old girl was shot in Southeast D.C., she’s still in critical condition. D.C. police say her younger brother found a loaded gun inside the apartment and shot her.
ON the night of the shooting police charged 21-year-old D’Jaunae McCrory Jackson with cruelty to children, assault on a police officer and possessing the gun used in the shooting. But that story has now changed after police arrested Kenneth Stokes.
McCrory Jackson is no longer facing a gun charge and has been released from jail.
Instead, detectives now say the gun belonged to Stokes who was identified as McCrory Jackson’s boyfriend.
A witness got Stokes on the phone as a detective listened to the call and Stokes said “that he was sorry and was going to turn himself in.” The document says the detective then heard Stokes say “it was his gun,” according to a court document filed in the case.
On the night of the shooting, police say they found a gun on a TV stand inside the apartment here on Galveston Street and described it as a ghost gun with an extended magazine and a laser sight.
Police say that gun has now been linked to the shooting of a dog back in August just down the street. The dog—identified as Chaos—survived the shooting and Stokes is now facing an animal cruelty charge as well.
On the night of the shooting, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith was asked about the relationship between McCrory Jackson and the five year old victim.
“So what we believe at this time is that the female that was arrested for assault on a police officer is a sister to the female victim,” Smith died.
Police also arrested a man inside the apartment and charged him with cruelty to children.
“What we know about the male individual is that he is a friend of the family who the family has known for quite some time,” she said. “From my understanding the child’s mother left the children in the care of the adult male while she went to run some errands.”
Charges against that man have been dropped.
Stokes remains locked up in a D.C. jail and is due back in court sometime next month.